Qualcom Founder Gives “Chunk” to Technion

As I was reading the Wall Street Journal last week, I glimpsed into the column “Gift of the week”. I was very pleased to see that Mr. Irwin Jacobs, co-founder and chairman of Qualcom Inc., and his wife Joan Jacobs made a substantial donation of $30 million to Techion, the Israel Institute of Technology in order to rename and expand the university’s graduate school including funds for fellowships and research. What really surprised me is what I read further down on the article. Mr. Jacobs is not a member of Technion’s alumni. Alumni members tend to give back to the school they graduated as a token of their appreciation for being the springboard for their professional development. But Mr. Jacobs, an engineer professor himself, never studied or taught at Technion. But he has known Technion graduates for years first as a teacher and later through his companies. In addition, he familiarized himself with the School, the campus and its faculty thanks to a facility Qualcom opened in Haifa twenty years ago and came to deeply appreciate the work carried out there. This led the Jacobses to making this substantial donation to Technion that would also help boost Israel’s economy.

Last week was a good one for Technion because recognition of excellence did not come only from the private sector. I was very pleased to read on the Jerusalem Post that Dr. Hossam Haiek, 31, a Christian Arab Haifa resident and researcher at the Technion’s chemical engineering faculty and its Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute, received the largest grant even given by the European Union to an Israeli scientist. Haiek was presented with the Marie Curie Grant worth 1.75 million Euros to develop an “electronic nose” to sniff out cancer. According to the article the grant will allow Haiek to set up a new lab and hire researches from Israel and abroad to develop the diagnostic device. Haiek aims to develop tiny, nanometric sensors that can detect various types of tumors and determine the stage of the disease. Using samples from the patient’s breath, it is hoped that diseases will be diagnosed in early stages, even before they begin to spread.

This is great news not only for Technion but also for Israel since Dr. Haiek is the only Israeli to ever receive this grant so far, according to Professor Moshe Eisenberg, the Technion’s vice president for research.

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